All That You Can't Leave Behind
by GeoFount
Summary: OrihimeUlquiorra : Orihime talks to the dead again. [Sort of sequel to Through Endless Sands and The Load We Bear]


**AN: This should be renamed the fic that would not cooperate. This turned out to be more of an Orihime piece then Orihime/Ulquiorra but I just hold onto the wheel and hope this thing goes where I want it to. So sorry!**

**This came about when one day I sat down and reread "Through Endless Sands" and afterwards I thought "Wow I'm just really depressed now." And then I thought "these guys deserve a happy ending." And then I thought "everyone does." So these last few weeks I worked on this thing, alternating between pulling my hair out, getting more depressed, and squeeing like an idiot. It is a sort of sequel to "Through Endless Sands" and "The Load We Bear" but not...cause someone always dies in those other ones. I tried to tie in elements with the other two into this but you shouldn't have to read the other two to understand this. It should be okay as a standalone piece.**

**Also, a warning: I have not read Bleach since the end of the Fullbring Arc. I had to google Ishida's name for the love of God. So I apologize. Hopefully they're not to out of character.**

******Because everyone deserves a happy ending.** ;)  


* * *

She has a shrine of her brother.

In her living room, with his smiling picture as the centerpiece, surrounded by candles and flowers and pretty knickknacks he had given her. He used to love to give her things. Small things but kind things that meant the world to her, like her hairpins. He had shown his love for her in this way and so, when he died, she made the shrine to show her love for him, gathering together all the things he had left her.

When she comes back from Hueco Muendo with something lost she has no shrine to build. Ulquiorra had left her nothing. Nothing but a feeling.

* * *

When they had gotten back, Ichigo had said whilst they stood in the road, "Everyone came back okay. No one died."

Everyone agreed with him, except Orihime, who thought, someone did die, a lot died in fact.

But no one was talking about the Arrancar. No one thought of them. Because they were the enemy. And maybe that was how war went. When one side endures no casualties they will say no one died, even if the other force is completely decimated and the battlefield is littered with bodies.

For Ichigo and the others no one had died. For Orihime lots had.

* * *

When Orihime wanted to talk to her brother she would sit in front of his shrine and look at the photograph with his smiling visage. It helped to see his photograph, as if by seeing his face she could pretend he was still there in one shape or another. His expression never changes. He is always smiling. He is always happy, maybe for her, which helps get her through the tough times and makes her proud when things are going good.

Orihime has no picture of Ulquiorra. Nothing whatsoever she can look upon to see his face. So when she talks to him, she talks to the empty darkness. Which, after some thought, wasn't very far from what Ulquiorra had been anyway.

In the empty darkness she cannot see his expression, but that only makes her miss him all the more for some reason.

* * *

Upon their return, school continued as if nothing had happened. Homework had to be done, tests had to be taken, grades had to be made. It all seemed so silly really. Save the world one day, solve math problems the next. Funny how a few months ago she had been getting scolded by Urahara for not being aggressive enough. Now she gets scolded by a teacher for being a minute late to class.

"It's so ridiculous," she whines to the dark that night. "I wonder how Kurosaki is able to do it without faltering. Even now he still patrols the city at night for Hollows." She falls silent, frowns down at her clasped hands. "But I guess for me it's different, isn't it? That part of my life is over. It's not over for him."

The dark gives no answers but Orihime is used to that. Her brother had never responded back to her either.

* * *

"Rukia's come back." Tatsuki is sipping on a juice drink during lunch and staring off at some random object.

Orihime pauses with her sandwich of beets, salmon, and sauerkraut halfway to her mouth. "How do you know?" She hadn't seen the petite Shinigami at all. Surely Rukia would have come by to see her if she had returned.

"Because," says Tatsuki, "Ichigo is smiling."

Across the grass Ichigo is sitting with his friends. Keigo is shouting something obnoxious to Ichigo and Ichigo, scowling, drop kicks him across the yard. Yet, when he sits back down and thinks no one is paying attention to him, there is a small smile flitting across his face, as if he is trying to stop it from forming.

Orihime takes a bite out of her sandwich. "Funny," she says from around her food, "I hadn't noticed."

Tatsuki grunts, sounding like she had gotten the answer she had expected. She sucks on her juice, emptying the small carton, then throws it away across the grass.

* * *

"I wonder when I stopped paying attention to Ichigo so much," Orihime chatters as she brushes her hair. "I used to know what he smelled like. How weird is that? Now I can't even notice when he's happy or sad." She pauses and puts a finger to her mouth. "I wonder if that makes me a bad friend?"

In her mind, she swears she can hear Ulquiorra laughing.

* * *

Rukia showed up a week later. Ichigo must have known before everyone she was coming. He had failed to tell anyone, which wasn't lost on Orihime. He harbored his own feelings and guarded them jealously.

Rukia appeared on Orihime's doorstep one night, decked out in her Shinigami uniform and ready to slay some Hollows. She had requested her old patrol job back. Her brother had granted it to her. Surprising but not. Byakuya was an ass but he still cared about his sister. He had allowed her to take up her old position for her happiness.

That is what Orihime thought anyway. Truthfully she had no idea why. Perhaps Orihime only thought of it the way she had because she wanted to romanticize it.

They sat in Orihime's living room and drank tea, chatting like old girlfriends. "Do you plan to come back to the school?" asks Orihime.

"No, that part of my career is over," says Rukia. "I have no reason to go back to playing that role. But I'll still be around. Call on me whenever you wish."

Orihime smiles. Life was strange in so very many ways. Rukia had been her love rival once upon a time. She should have hated the fact she had returned. But strangely, she is glad. Glad she had a friend. Maybe not one to confide in, but a friend none the less.

* * *

Who did she confide in, she wonders after Rukia has departed and she is cleaning up the plates and cups. She didn't talk to Ichigo or the others about Hueco Muendo or her feelings. Tatsuki she could not talk to either. Tatsuki would not understand because she had not been there and it would only upset those that had been there, especially Ichigo. She knew he felt bad enough for what had happened there on that high pavilion in the sky. She had opened her mouth once, ready to say to him, "It was my fault. I called for help. The beast answered my call," but the words died on her tongue. That beast, that darkness in Ichigo, was something he had struggled with for a long time. Her calling for help had simply been the catalyst to bring it out once again.

Apologizing for it would only bother Ichigo more, she knew. If she tried to take blame for it it would only make him sad. That was the kind of person Ichigo was. So she kept her silence and said nothing.

She could not confide in any of them so instead she confides in Ulquiorra. Maybe because she knew there would be no consequence in what she tells him. Because he was gone, done and over.

She stops herself from crying when this thought crosses her mind. She does not want him to see her sad, silly as that may be. But always after she has this thought, in the morning there are tear stains on her pillow.

* * *

Prom came like a summer wind, an affair that seemed so silly now compared to years ago when she had thought of it. She goes with Chad, not as a date but as a friend, and is happy about it. For the past few weeks she had been avoiding Ishida. She was terrified he was going to ask her to be his date and terrified that she would say yes to not hurt his feelings. She had avoided Ichigo too, terrified he was going to ask her as well and, after she said no, having to see the look of relief on both their faces. It was easier to avoid than confront these things.

Rukia is not able to come so Ichigo is by himself. He stands to the side, sipping punch and scowling. Orihime sidles up to him in her frilly dress.

"Sorry Rukia wasn't able to make it."

The Ichigo of the past would have denied this. He would have spluttered that he didn't care and that this whole affair was stupid anyway. But this Ichigo simply blows air through his teeth. "Yeah well, she had work to do," he says instead.

It was all the confirmation Orihime needs. She pats down her frills, smiling. Everything wasn't so bad after all.

* * *

She never says anything about Ichigo and Rukia to Ulquiorra. For some reason some dark part of her doesn't want Ulquiorra to know. Some dark part of her is satisfied that Ulquiorra still believes that Ichigo might love her and that he might in fact be bothered by it.

* * *

She dreams of his hands sometimes. His hands had been so white and his fingers so long. They had always looked so delicate but behind their porcelain facade they had been so powerful. She loved looking at his hands.

She dreams of them reaching out for her, like they had in that final moment when they had been together. She reaches back, just like she had then, but he disappears, into sand into wind, before she can grasp him.

She used to dream of her brother and wake up screaming. When she dreams of Ulquiorra she wakes up gasping. Her hands are in front of her, curled onto nothing. She lays on the sweat covered bed and pants into the darkness.

"When one holds onto nothing," she remembers him saying, an old memory from the past, "they can grasp anything."

"So why," she whispers. "Why didn't you grasp onto me?"

* * *

Graduation comes like the fall of leaves. Together they stand on the front lawn and listen to Ishida, the valedictorian, give his speech. Beside Orihime Ichigo rubs his nose and yawns. He had finished a close second for the top of their class, but with his night time work of Hollow slaying it only made sense that his grades would slip a little. In the past year he had fallen asleep in class and during lunch more times than Orihime cared to think about.

Ishida's speech is about growing up, about the long journey they had endured, the challenges they had overcome, the friendships they had made along the way. To everyone else his speech is about school and leaving highschool. To those that had gone to Hueco Muendo, it means something else altogether.

They throw their caps into the air and are officially graduates. They're supposed to be adults now but what did that mean exactly? Did it mean moving into your own place, living by yourself, and supporting yourself without your parents there to guide you?

It's funny for Orihime. She had been doing that for as long as she could remember. After her brother died she had been her own caretaker so in that regard she had been an adult ever since she was nine years old.

Tatsuki and the others had often told her she was childish and silly, made fun of her silly antics. And maybe that was why she acted the way she did. She had been so very robbed of her childhood at such a young age. Maybe she had been trying to recapture some of that after being forced to grow up too fast.

When she gets home she takes off her cap and gown, looks into the mirror at this supposed woman she has become. She touches her face and worries. "Am I childish?" she asks the dark.

But as usual the dark gives no answers.

* * *

Sometimes the feelings will well up so strongly inside she cannot bear it. She wants to talk to somebody about it, let it out so it isn't festering inside her so strongly. That festering wound called Ulquiorra, residing inside her soul. If she could she would slice it open, let it bleed out so it doesn't hurt so much.

Desperate, she turns to Rukia one day. "Do you remember Ulquiorra?" It is so strange to say his name aloud that she almost chokes on her own tongue.

Rukia raises an eyebrow. "Who?" she asks.

Rukia doesn't know who he is. Of course she doesn't. She never met him. The only ones who would remember him is Ishida and Ichigo, and Orihime dare not ask them. Ishida would only be hurt by it and it would torment Ichigo to hear.

She could tell Tatsuki about it. She could explain everything, make her understand. But in her head she can already see Tatsuki's reaction, the horror that would cross her face. She would only call Ulquiorra a monster.

Orihime doesn't want to hear this. Mostly because, in truth, she knew he was. He had killed Ichigo twice. The only reason Ichigo was still alive today was because _she _had saved him. She knows this and she knows that is how the others saw Ulquiorra too. Yet she remembers the other side of him, the side the others had not saw while she was in captivity. His silent support he had never intended, all their conversations in between everything, how his mere presence had kept her sane. He had provoked her when her friends arrived, told her things she did not want to hear to snap her out of her numbness. Her anger, her pain, even her sorrow, he had elicited to keep her alive, for before then she could only stare at nothing and feel nothing.

Looking back now she understood. She was an emotional creature. Emotion drove her to be strong and enabled her powers. It had nearly taken Tatsuki's death for her to bring them out the first time. Without emotion she could not survive. And maybe that was why Ulquiorra had said those horrible things, incensed her to the point she had struck him. Perhaps he had recognized she needed to feel those things in order to keep moving forward.

_I would have gone mad without you._

Ulquiorra had been a monster. The things he had said to her were monstrous. But she thanked him for it anyway.

* * *

Her career starts like the snap of winter. She gets a job answering phones for a corporation. It's an easy job and not bad pay. Her coworkers are nice, sweet, and it isn't a far walk from her tiny apartment. Yet Tatsuki, when she tells her this, frowns. "You're not planning on going to a university?"

Orihime had expected this question. She simply smiles like she has practiced so many times in her head, cheeks hurting with the strain, and says it's what she wants. The lie is bitter on her tongue, like a fruit that has not yet ripened. She was an adult now, remember? Her aunt, that long lost relative who had helped support her, had withdrawn her aid. Orihime couldn't afford to go to an university.

Tatsuki on the other hand is going. Her parents would handle her rent, help her pay for food. They would support her.

_And I'm the childish one_, thinks Orihime, bitter and angry for reasons she doesn't understand. She feels ashamed for it afterwards. She knows it's not Tatsuki's fault. It's no one's fault. Yet when she thinks this, she can't help but think of all the barren bodies left on the sandy swells of Hueco Muendo, all those caricatures of war. The deaths of the Arrancar had been no one's fault everyone had said. It couldn't be helped. It had been an unavoidable consequence. But someone had raised their sword. Someone had dealt the final blow.

When she thinks of it like this, Orihime can't help but think that saying it was no one's fault was just a pretty way of saying we don't want to deal with the consequences of it.

* * *

There is a man who works with Orihime. He is handsome, young, bright, and very friendly. He never fails to smile at her when they arrive in the morning nor does he ever forget to ask if she'd like anything when he goes to the coffee shop. He sits by her at lunch and when she drops her fork, he bends down and picks it up. "Here you go," he says and hands it back to her, smiling.

Orihime smiles back then discreetly tries to get up without disturbing him so she can get another one.

"You should go out with him," says Tatsuki that night. There is a straw in her mouth and she is blinking constantly but methodically. Who knew Tatsuki couldn't hold her liquor?

Orihime shakes her head. She had hoped Tatsuki would sneer at the boy's affections, not encourage her.

"Why not?" asks Tatsuki, teetering on her stool. "You're still not hung up on Ichigo are you?" Orihime scowls and Tatsuki laughs. "Don't make that face. You know how obsessed you were with him."

Orihime is aware of this but for some reason now she can only look back at it in embarrassment. A child's crush taken too far. She doesn't want to talk about Ichigo.

"If it isn't Ichigo then what it is?" asks Tatsuki.

But Orihime doesn't want to talk about that either. She doesn't want to answer and then have to explain. Thankfully Tatsuki is just drunk enough that she forgets 30 seconds later that she even asked a question to begin with.

Later, when Orihime is carrying a nearly unconscious Tatsuki back to her dorm room, she wonders, How long does it take before waiting for someone turns from endearing to pathetic? When does waiting turn into unable to let go?

* * *

"What am I waiting for?" asks Orihime when she gets home to her dark house. She wants to say you're not coming back but the words clog in her throat like a sticky mess. If she says it then that'll be it. If she says it it'll be real and there will be no more denying it. "What would you do if you were here right now?" she asks instead.

She pretends that the dark shifts just a little bit, only so that she won't feel so alone.

* * *

Life goes on, an endless current of mediocrity. Orihime goes to work. She comes home. She makes dinner, takes a bath, and goes to sleep early because she has to get up early. On the weekends sometimes she will go out with Tatsuki but Tatsuki is busy in her studies and really they don't have much to talk about these days. For Tatsuki the future is unwritten, a bright golden path that can lead anywhere. For Orihime it's a small office and a phone, a boy who keeps smiling at her and her feigned obliviousness.

She hardly sees her other friends. Chad was working with his grandfather at his shop. Ishida was away at medical school. God only knew what Ichigo was doing. He worked for his dad a bit she had heard but at night he was still hollow slaying.

"It is only in anarchy that we can truly be free," she remembers a voice saying so long ago, reluctant to recall his name after so long.

She hadn't understand what he meant then but now she thinks she does. All her dreams, all the things she had wanted, all seemed so very far away now. She had wanted to be a teacher and an astronaut. She had wanted to make all kinds of delicious meals and stuff herself silly. Now she is too tired to do anything but microwave some frozen dinner. She had wanted her own garden and to travel the world. But she can't grow a garden on her apartment balcony. She can't travel the world when she has bills to pay. The big shining future before her had vanished like a sunset, disappeared into the darkness of the inevitability of adulthood.

When Orihime gets home she drops her bag. She buries her head in her hands. She doesn't want to cry, she doesn't want him to see her like this, but she can't help it.

"I hate this," she muffles into her palms, even though she isn't sure what exactly she hates. Her job or her apartment or her pile of bills, her growing debts? Her absent friends? Her lack of family? The lost childhood, the stolen future? The dead being the only ones she could confide in? Maybe it was all of it.

Her shoulders shudder. "I hate this," she muffles again, "Ulquiorra."

That night the winds are harsher than usual. It rattles the shutters like a spirit that is unhappy about something and Orihime watches from her bedroom window, pretending she can see sand in their drifts.

* * *

Life changes in interesting ways. Perhaps it is a matter of wanting it the most. Or maybe it's a matter of luck.

Maybe it's a simple matter of perseverance.

* * *

When she gets home her house is dark. Orihime is used to this because her house is always dark. She is always forgetting to leave a light on or maybe she prefers the dark. The dark isn't unusual but the shifting form in the darkness she sees after she has closed the door and dropped her bag is.

She shrieks a good shriek that would have frightened cats then dives for the bat Tatsuki insisted she keep by her front door. She brandishes it like a sword. "I have a bat," she warns. "Don't-"

A hand wraps around the wood. White as snow with nails dark as pitch. Orihime stares at it, breath in her throat.

_I always did love to look at his hands._

It is him and not her that turns on the lamp in her hallway, her hands still wrapped around the handle of the bat as if glued there. The light washes over him. His face is stoic, the same porcelain mask he always bore. He looks exactly the same. Same horned half-mask, same dark hair, green eyes, same green tear-stained marks.

_Tears, _thinks Orihime, the past roaring up like a windswept current. _Why?_

She opens her mouth. She has to say something. _Anything! _She has to confirm it's not a dream.

"Oh," she says.

In the next instant Orihime proved she was not above fainting.

* * *

When she wakes there is a soft light, a single lamp aglow on her nightstand, and the bed underneath her. She rubs her face. "Oh," she mutters.

Had she been drinking? Her memory is distorted and she can't recall much. Is this how Tatsuki feels after a Friday night?

When she sits up, she sees what, or more accurately who, is standing there and the memory comes crashing in like Tatsuki when she's had too much. She stares at him. He stares back at her. "Oh," says Orihime.

His movements are almost too fast for her to follow and she nearly cracks her head on the wall when she reflexively draws away from his sudden rush. He holds something under her nose. She nearly goes cross-eyed trying to figure out what it is, and the smell coming from it is strong and horrible.

"Ugh, good lord. What is that?"

He holds still for a moment, watching her carefully, before slowly leaning away. "I was afraid you were going to faint again."

"Oh," says Orihime. Her choice of words are poor for she can see his arm twitch, fighting the reflex to shove whatever that foul smelling stuff was under her nose again. She looks about her bedroom. Everything looked the same. Nothing was different. She touches her chest, seeking her beating heart. "Am I...Am I dead? Was that garlic with honey and mutton over pickles and tomato sauce as bad as my coworkers said it was?"

Ulquiorra's face is very still, seemingly unsure how to respond to this. "I assure you you are very much alive," he says after a moment.

"Then how...How? You're..." Even now she can't say the word.

The look he gives her this time is a strange look, as if confused why she would be asking such a thing. "Did I not say that if Ichigo did not finish me it would not be over?"

He had said that but Orihime had not understood what it meant. "But you...you turned to dust. I saw you. You disappeared."

"You did see me supposedly disappear," says Ulquiorra. "And I did turn to dust. But all of Hueco Muendo is made of spirit particles, isn't it? The sand and dust included. The Quincy knew that. I thought you would as well."

"So you..."

"Regeneration is one of my specialties," he says as way of explanation. He glances away. "Although it did take a very long time to recover."

Years, thinks Orihime. Years to rebuild a body that had been utterly decimated. How many years had it been? Many. Many, many that were far too long.

"So you restored yourself." Her forehead crinkles. "But why...why did you come here?"

"I came to answer your questions."

She blinks. "My questions?"

"Yes. All the questions you have asked me throughout the years." He turns and faces her fully. "Ichigo is able to do it because he's an idiot," he says. "And parts of life are never over. They are simply transitions, a change from one state to another. There is no over, not even after death.

You are not childish. You are kind and ignore the darker parts of the world. Because of this your own light can shine into other people's darkness.

It doesn't make you a bad friend. It makes you less of a stalker."

"H-hey," says Orihime, twitching.

"I did try to grasp onto you," Ulquiorra carries on. "I reached out for you. I wanted..." He stops. The tiniest frown mars his face, one that only Orihime would have caught.

And Orihime realizes. Her questions. All the questions she had asked the dark throughout these long years. All the times she had spoken to the dead.

She lowers her face. Tears drip onto the coverlet. All her life she had talked to the dead. But for once the dead had answered back.

"I reached back," she whispers.

"You did," says Ulquiorra. His head tilts slightly. "You asked me once what I would do if I were here right now." He steps towards her. "I plan to grasp onto you completely."

When he moves towards her this time she does not move away, and his kiss felt like the bright sunlight glow of spring come at last.

* * *

There is darkness again yet this time she is not alone. There is skin against skin, a faint breathing between bodies. She can only see his faint outline but that is okay. He always had reminded her of darkness.

The faint trace of his fingertips along her arm. She loved looking at his hands but she finds she likes the feel of them more. In the darkness he asks that age old question. "Are you scared?"

She shifts against his skin. "Yes."

His fingertips stop their tracing. "You answered no before," he says and maybe it's her imagination the slight strain in his voice but she doesn't think so.

"That was then," says Orihime. "I'm scared now."

There is a long moment of silence. "Scared of me?"

"Yes," says Orihime. "Of what you mean to me." She looks up at his faint outline. "I can't lose you again. I can't go back to talking to the dark."

Was that a smile she saw or just her imagination again? "You won't have to," he says. "I'm not going anywhere."

* * *

She is terrified to bring Ulquiorra to Ichigo but after three weeks she knew it couldn't be helped. She couldn't pretend that the Arrancar didn't exist and truthfully she didn't want to.

When they walk into the park together, it is not Ichigo but Ishida who points his weapon at Ulquiorra to her surprise. Without even thinking about it she steps between them and after a moment or two of chaotic shouting Ishida finally lowers his weapon, though he does not put it away.

"Surprised to see me?" Ulquiorra asks Ichigo after everyone has calmed down.

"Yes." The color is slowly starting to return to Ichigo's face. "But I'm glad too."

"Glad?"

"Yes, I never wanted to win the way I did. It wasn't me."

"Winning is winning," says Ulquiorra. "What does it matter in the way it was done?"

"It's not the way I fight," Ichigo insists. "What I did to you was horrible. I tore you to pieces."

Ulquiorra shrugs. "You did what you had to in order to win. There is nothing wrong with that. Besides, I did rather deserve it. I did blow a hole through your chest on two different occasions after all."

Ichigo pauses, thinks about that for a moment. "Yea, you did." He makes a face. "Asshole."

Ulquiorra smirks at him while to the side Ishida's palm meets his forehead and Orihime shakes her head in wonderment. Who knew the two would bond over the various ways they had tried to kill each other? Of course it was Ulquiorra and Ichigo. Orihime should have expected it.

* * *

They stand alone on some random piece of artwork that dots the park, hiding in the shade from the sun. In the distance on the grass Orihime is chatting with Rukia, Chad, and Ishida. She is laughing about something. Ulquiorra watches the expressions flit across her face. Always he is watching her. He always has been. Aizen had given him the task to watch her. Funny how he was still carrying on Aizen's orders to this day, however on his own terms now.

"You're not in love with her are you?" he asks.

Ichigo scratches his head and makes that expression Ulquiorra had started to call the Ichigo expression. In other words looking like a total oblivious idiot.

"Who?" asks Ichigo.

The corner of Ulquiorra's mouth twitches upwards. "It doesn't matter. You have already answered my question."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Ichigo demands but Ulquiorra does not answer. "Hey asshole listen to me what I'm talking to you. And what is with that satisfied smirk on your face? I'm swear I'm gonna run my sword through you."

"You can try if you wish. Even if you do defeat me again, and I promise you won't, I'll only return several years from now whole once again." Ulquiorra waits but Ichigo makes no move. He only sits there, scowling. "Well?"

"I'm not going to," Ichigo huffs. "I don't want to live with that again. And besides, there's a girl who will miss you and this time around she might actually _show_ it. I don't want to live with that either."

Ulquiorra smirks like a smile. Maybe he had lost that one battle with Ichigo on top of the palace of Hueco Muendo but he had won in other ways. In the end getting completely decimated by Ichigo hadn't been so bad after all.

* * *

They could never have a normal relationship. They would not be able to go to dinner together or buy a house together. Both of them would not work nine to fives and come home to each other. They would not pool their money together and debate about whether or not they could afford a second car. They would never have a nursery or argue over names. None of that was in the cards for them.

But what was normal anyway? Orihime thinks about her life and how it had been anything but normal. The journey to Soul Society to rescue Rukia, her stay in Hueco Muendo and the battle they had gone through to escape there. None of it was considered normal. Her friends now too were anything but normal. Ichigo was still helping Soul Society, Rukia was from there, Chad had his powers, and Ishida was still a Quincy. If anything Orihime was the most normal one out of the bunch.

She had her nine to five, she had her house. She went to work, she came home, she made dinner. She did normal things in this supposed world of freedom. But Ulquiorra had been right. These normal things did not make her free. She had to work to support herself. She had a home she had to pay for to live comfortably. In this way she was not free.

Ulquiorra was the one thing in her life that did not fit. In her sea of normality he was anarchy, something that was not normal and did not mesh with the rest. That was why, when she was with him, that was the only time she was really truthfully free.

* * *

"_Across these endless sands I have travelled,_

_To be by your side once more."_

_~Fin~_


End file.
